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The Path Unending (A Cultivation Quest)

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I'm not sure that Zhi holding a funeral for Liren by himself does enough to break the loop.
Liren has still died and Liyu will still come back to no father.
 
The funeral's a good idea, but I think that Liyu has to be there. Liyu is the one who has the authority to say that the Day is perfect... because this is the day that she has the courage to say goodbye.

Edit: Nevermind, Word of Cteatus says that won't work. Whatever we do must be done here and now.
 
Interfering with Liyu will cause a reset, but what if we are fast enough. What if it's Liyu who needs to die?
 
...You know, I looked back to the very first loop and it ended shortly after Liyu (who we didn't know the name of at the time) ran into a pasture. Immediately after, we encountered the dog.

So that was Liyu deliberately triggering the reset by finding her dead father, presumably to prevent anyone from being erased.

...Maybe removing Liren's corpse is the right call. Maybe if Liyu never finds the body, and nothing messes with her directly enough to justify a reset, that could work? But I don't know if that will be enough... The man being missing could also be enough perceived imperfection to trigger the reset.

What we need to do is somehow attack the fundamental underlying truth of the Kukuni. An attempt to give a child a perfect day that ended in tragedy. Is there a way to make the tragedy "stick" somehow, unable to be taken back?

DkArthas said:
Interfering with Liyu will cause a reset, but what if we are fast enough. What if it's Liyu who needs to die?
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This is the wrong track I think. Liyu dying would definitely cause a reset and also is morally objectionable.
 
ImperatorV said:
What we need to do is somehow attack the fundamental underlying truth of the Kukuni. An attempt to give a child a perfect day that ended in tragedy. Is there a way to make the tragedy "stick" somehow, unable to be taken back?
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That's pretty much what this
KreenWarrior said:
[x] Hold an impromptu funeral for Liren. Say a prayer to usher him to the ancestors, use the Everdistant Flame to burn his corpse and hopefully erase him from the loop through use of Time, and then scatter the ashes with the Worldstream, so he can never be called back.
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is attempting. Destroying her father's body so thoroughly it kicks him from the loop and kills him for good.
 
That line about the fish jumping into the nets was creative. Fantastic imagery that I'm gonna remember.

I'm not sure how I feel about his new clone/reincarnation technique. Mechanically, it reads like "Deus Ex Machina, the move" but I can tell it's going to create a lot of cinematic moments in the future.

And I'm going to laugh if the solution to the time loop is that we have to counter the Kukuni's attempt to make the perfect day.
"Everyone needs to treat that little girl like shit!" - Kong Zhi
 
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[X] Hold an impromptu funeral for Liren. Say a prayer to usher him to the ancestors, use the Everdistant Flame to burn his corpse and hopefully erase him from the loop through use of Time, and then scatter the ashes with the Worldstream, so he can never be called back.
 
This situation reminds me of a charm in Exalted 3rd Edition called Unstoppable Magnus Approach, where a character with the charm could convert a large amount of initiative (a abstraction of how well you're doing in the fight, all initiative is lost after combat ends) into temporary willpower (a more precious resource that you hold onto after combat ends).

If this sounds like it's ripe for abuse... it is. The developers added a note in the sidebar basically saying "deliberately drawing out combat (or doing other weird things like two allies spamming withering attacks on each other for a net gain of initiative) to farm initiative and convert it into willpower is illegal". From where we're standing, the kukuni's strategy is pretty similar.

Maybe pointing out the paradox to the kukuni and forcing it to come to terms with the fact that it's drawing out something that it should've been able to accomplish, which is... Against its nature/purpose? Contradictory to the circumstances under which it was born? Might have some effect.

The other alternative I can think of is to do some kind of theatrical production along the lines of "test Liyu, generate a positive result, tell her that she's the chosen one we've been looking for but bad guys are hot on our heels and we need to evacuate her before they catch up - don't worry about the village or your dad, they'll be kept safe in some way" to generate an exciting excuse for her to leave the village on a high note. I think this may not work because Liyu may be aware of the loop, though - she apologized to us in the last one, which means she already knows what's going on and probably can't be fooled like this.
 
Man what a chapter. Bunch of new revelations. Maxing out Shatter the Mirror (new insight!!!). Shatter the Mirror was obtained 151 chapters ago (1535 real world days). Really looking forward to seeing it in action. Altering the Auroch into a ??? feels so on point. Also the dog is best boy once again!
 
OnTheOceanOfLife said:
Maybe pointing out the paradox to the kukuni and forcing it to come to terms with the fact that it's drawing out something that it should've been able to accomplish, which is... Against its nature/purpose? Contradictory to the circumstances under which it was born? Might have some effect.
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The only issue with pointing out a paradox though, is that there isn't one. This isn't a Kukuni born of a villages pursuit of a perfect day acting against it's purpose. It's a villages attempt at a perfect day gone wrong that is failing to make said day. It is...acting entirely according to its nature. It's still trying because that's built into its nature, but deliberate or not so is the failure and tragedy. Just pointing that out or that it's actions have only made a perfect day more impossible won't do anything, and any blame it'll shift on humans being flawed contemptible animals that don't appreciate what they should anyway. Just arguing with the irrational alien toddler won't work, and definitely not while it's tantruming.
 
If we find an angle to track down the physical Kukuni we could probably just punch it very hard. It's either in the cabin or on Liyu and this update didn't really point out any suspicious cabin objects. Did Liyu have some weird perfect-looking amulet or something? Dog could maybe lead us to it too.
 
I definitely think the answer is not to try to give a funeral to Liren. He and Liyu have had centuries to try to get out of this and I'm sure they've tried burning or burying his body a number of times.

I think we just need to find the source of the Time anam. We haven't actually used the Garden within the village itself yet, only on the outskirts, where the cart was. And we know that the kukuni is attacking us via the ambient anam:

Vesvius said:
What is out there? Is it a person? A Spirit Beast? A Kukuni? What aspects do they hold? How are they blending in so perfectly with the ambient anam? Are they even truly hostile? The way they lurk just out of sight even now lends itself to such a thought, but they have yet to attack. Most aggressors would have sprung from the shadows the moment their cover was blown, yet whatever dwells beyond our campfire has not taken a single step towards us.
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Vesvius said:
My attention wanders from the ox and to the rest of the clearing. I allow the signatures I've ignored back into my attention and scan the area as a whole. Nothing seems strange at all, even to my enhanced Sixth Sense. The ambient anam is… well, it is fairly quiet. Were the land around us a beast, it would be like the ox: placid and unbothered by the complexities of life. If anything, it is more peaceful than I would usually expect, just a simple ebb and flow that almost makes me yawn when I witness it.
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Vesvius said:
My attention wanders from the ox and to the rest of the clearing. I allow the signatures I've ignored back into my attention and scan the area as a whole. Nothing seems strange at all, even to my enhanced Sixth Sense. The ambient anam is… well, upon closer inspection, it does seem a bit more active than usual. But that is hardly proof of anything. For all we know, it could mean that there have been more animals in the woods lately, increasing the quality of the local life anam.
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Vesvius said:
My strange calm deserts me and I fall into my breathing pattern. The routine feels off, like a song played slightly off-tempo. Still, it sweeps the forest around us, searching for the assailant. All seems normal, for the most part, however. The only thing out of the ordinary is that the ambient anam is stronger than usual, pressing down against me and into my-

-a low, ragged breath rips itself from my lungs as I turn my focus inwards. The ambient anam is pressing against me like a heavy blanket, but that is not what draws my focus. Instead, my senses turn towards the patterns of anam within me, the echoes of techniques used and Natural Wonders cycled.
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Vesvius said:
Zhuan Kun glances up, eyes locked on me as he notices the change in my breathing. Daiyu says something, but I cannot say what it was. She may as well be speaking underwater for all I hear. My focus is still internal, still on the anam within me. The panicked pulsing of my energy seems to have made the ambient anam retreat, ending the spiritual attack… for now.
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It was relevant enough that Ves noted it in his summary of the things we knew a few updates ago:
Vesvius said:
+You learned that the foreign intelligence's attack was spiritual in nature and tied into the ambiant anam.
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This is probably because of the nature of the Symphony-in-Rags' Time anam pervading ambient anam in the first place. Time is something that pervades existence.

We used the Garden outside the village, next to the cart. But we haven't actually used it here in the village. And certainly, not within this house! We might need to find the Time anam.

[] DRAFT: Find the Source
-[] This is a Kukuni presumably born from Perfection, but the day being reset is blatantly Time. How did the kukuni develop such a power? It can't have been from nothing. The kukuni must have found a source of Time anam, which it then drank of deeply until it was able to reset the day over and over, expanding as it did. And since the kukuni and Liren both alluded to how it needed to expend energy to erase things from the world, it might be possible to damage or destroy it, like a Natural Wonder or Treasure can be after drawing too much from them.
--[] Use the Stallion's Enclosed Garden to find the source of Time. It's probably in or near the house, since this is presumably where the Kukuni was born and where the anomaly expanded from. It couldn't have gone far in the one day it had before it reset things.
---[] Should we fail to find anything, or should the loop be about to end prematurely, burn Liren and the cabin with the Everdistant Flame. Liren seemed to think that the answer might have been someone other than Liyu finding his dead body, and the herbalist being erased from existence supports the idea that the kukuni feared that.

Edit: Changing the plan up a bit. I immediately became less confident after posting it.
 
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KreenWarrior said:
[x] Hold an impromptu funeral for Liren. Say a prayer to usher him to the ancestors, use the Everdistant Flame to burn his corpse and hopefully erase him from the loop through use of Time, and then scatter the ashes with the Worldstream, so he can never be called back.

I wish we could, say, pull in Mei and Zhuan, but I'm unclear how much time we have, or how far we can even go outside the house before getting the kukuni's attention.

Liren and the herbalist had a plan. The kukuni pulled out all the stops to prevent it, which means it saw it as a threat. Liren is already dead, so the next part is making sure Liyu doesn't find him. I don't think we know enough to come up with a plan of our own, so I think executing theirs is the safest bet.

And it does make a kind of sense. The Imperfect Perfect Day begins and ends with Liren. If we remove him, even for one day, I think the loop collapses. If we remove him for every loop, it definitely does. The whole narrative hinges on him.
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Yeah, I suppose the day is reset whenever Liyu makes her way home and sees her father. So hiding/burying/destroying the body should work.,, Liyu is kinda twisted herself so she won't know what to do if the body isn't there. However there is no one to comfort her there, and Zhi can't do it... So I'd say we need to somehow get the dog inside as well.

Vesvius said:
Furthermore, now that the technique has been integrated, these time-displaced Kong Zhi's are capable of far more than they were before. When invoking Shatter the Mirror, the Kong Zhi doppelgangers may now employ a technique of their own. The technique used is random, depending on which version of Kong Zhi is created, and is rolled like a normal technique. Any successes rolled are added to those of Shatter the Mirror itself.

This secondary effect may be invoked once for free in each combat encounter. Subsequent uses cost 2 points of mental stress each.
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Bonkers. That's some good shit.

Lotusrain said:
Mechanically, it reads like "Deus Ex Machina, the move" but I can tell it's going to create a lot of cinematic moments in the future.
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It'll still be a Defender technique though, even if the clone gets out and fires a laser beam.

Vesvius said:
Most techniques are named when I learn them. Some, like the original Blooming Spear, just seem right. And some techniques, like Shatter the Mirror or the Everdistant Flame, practically bellow their names into my mind, desperate to carve their identity into the world.

But this new technique? Nothing. It simply lurks, waiting for… something.
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This is interesting. Is it because it's something not seen before? Maybe waiting to be cycled at Natural Wonders?
 
Silverking said:
Just to be clear, this is the dog we're bringing back to Nokai. I will write a dang omake on this if I have to.
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I like to think the dog's just happy living each day.

edit: Also, regarding the idea of making the perfect day, you'd think we didn't just get an explanation from one of the people directly involved in this.

There is no perfect day. Well, there is the Perfect Day, the kukuni, but you get what I mean.

The kukuni's been chasing perfection with each reset, it's not gonna stop, not just because it'll lose its purpose, but because you can't reach perfection. Only it's shadow.

Fenhua was somewhat on the right track, I think. Liren needs his end. Now, finding out the how is the tricky part.
 
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Parabola said:
I definitely think the answer is not to try to give a funeral to Liren. He and Liyu have had centuries to try to get out of this and I'm sure they've tried burning or burying his body a number of times.
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I think there's a strong indication of the reset happening after Liyu finds her father or get knowledge of her father being dead. So they simply wouldn't have had the time to do so.

Edit:
Solution:
Hide the body. Try to find some notes that her father has written down. Copy her father's hand writing. Write a note:
"Hope you have had a great day. I had to leave on short notice to tend to some business. I'll be back in the morning".
 
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I think the way to fix this is to have the Headman arrange a funeral for Liren with a last will read out to explain the time loop. Ideally, we have Liren write it out in the time he has, but we might need to forge it if we do not have one more loop. That should give Liyu the closure she has not had since the loop began because presumably she has not been able to talk to her father in centuries. A message from him telling her to go with the sacred artists to experience new things might be able to make the day perfect because he is telling her to let go of him and move on.
 
Agreed on the funeral. It's the best we have yet, and barring a larger effort to coordinate a village wide funeral, removing him from the loop is our second best bet. We do still have to make sure to deliver the news to his daughter though.

Ideally my prefered outcome is to engineer a situation where the whole village can offer their condolences. But that's a hard one to do when we're rushing.
 
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HousePet said:
Mechanically, it says the technique will be random.
It seems more like a Deck of Many Things to me.
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Maybe. Mechanically, I'm assuming a roll that decides how close the technique will fit given the situation and then the author making one up to fit the situation. It would feel "random". Unless they already have character sheets and techniques written and ready to post pre-roll. In which case, damn, I'm impressed. That's a lot of work for something the players might not even see.
 
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Time 16?!

Oh godammit. This is going to be so much work.

Ah well, worries for later.

Anyway - this suggests something - the area wasn't expanding. The headsman's notes don't mention the plan for the perfect day, so Time had to already be looping at that point. What this suggests, I don't know.
 
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